Learning Management System – Does it Help or Hinder Learning?

Written By Shalini Talluri

February 15, 2013 // 04:30 PM

Learning Management System is used for administration, documentation, tracking and reporting of learning and training activities in an organization. LMS works as a powerful tool in the success of every training program in an organization, only if users have enough knowledge of its features and use them to their full potential.

LMS is helpful in the following ways:

Learners can flexibly take training where ever they want and they can easily access it whenever they need it using LMS.

Trainers will help learners by identifying where a learner is lagging and by helping them know the areas where they need to be trained for better prospects of career advancement. This is possible thanks to the tracking feature of the LMS.

LMS reduces instructors’ burden in evaluating and reporting the progress of learners to managers, and helps learners to understand the areas where they need to improve.

Assessments or quizzes in the LMS are helpful to learners to check their knowledge status. Learners can take them immediately after they have finished their classroom training. To pass the assessment, learner needs to qualify with a certain score.

Instructors can give module wise training with LMS and learners in turn also can get module wise feedback.

Certification is made easy with the LMS once employees complete the assigned training program. This serves as an incentive to employees to take up training. The collaborative learning feature of LMS helps learners to mingle with others and to expand their communication network and learn from peers.

LMS navigation should be very intuitive for the learners. If the navigation is difficult then learners face problems in accessing the training. We need to simplify the dashboard in such a way that all required links and features are visible at a glance, and unnecessary elements are removed.

LMS Administrator support must be available to the users all the time to resolve access issues. If support is not available from administrator, LMS will hinder learning. Users facing login problems or access issues will be frustrated and disillusioned with the medium, if they are not resolved soon by the LMS administrator. Hosting courses or assigning them without taking learners’ needs into account, will hinder learning.

An LMS with inbuilt features enables learners to not only access learning content, but also participate in surveys, polls and forums. They can also network with peers and seek answers from content experts. So if these opportunities are well utilized and managed by an able administrator, LMS will be beneficial for learners, trainers and managers in learning, assigning, managing and monitoring trainings online. In the absence of an efficient LMS administration system in place, LMS is bound to lose its purpose. Organizations may not see visible returns on their investment as an inefficient LMS administration system will not really help in promoting learning within the organization.